Freddie Prinze Jr.

Freddie Prinze Jr. was Zac Efron before Zac Efron thought he was Leonardo DiCaprio. As the guy who made She's All That'sRachael Leigh Cook beautiful by taking off her glasses and dressing her up in a bikini, Freddie Prinze Jr. seemed to be trapped in teen heartthrob purgatory, and we haven't seen a lot of him in the 21st century. But props to Prinze since, through it all, he landed a hot wife (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a $3 million mansion and memories of an Efron-esque following. His wife's post-Buffy career was revived by her role in The Grudge films, and Freddie Prinze Jr. is hoping his upcoming role on 24 will do the same for him.

Appeal

There's almost no sober man who would admit to being fan of Freddie Prinze Jr., but in his day, the man's White Strips smile and regular output of teen romantic comedies gave him the necessary skill set to be a mini-matinee idol for dreamy young girls. Freddie Prinze Jr.'s swoon-inducing abilities weren't just restricted to the teen set. People chose him twice (in 1999 and 2000) for its 50 Most Beautiful People list, while former co-star Selma Blair said women adore "the angel they see in him" and Jennifer Love Hewitt ordained him "the kindest person."

Even with his reputation as a nice guy and his fondness for love letters and all things romantically gooey, Freddie Prinze Jr. doesn't always have it rosy when it comes to his female groupies. He once shared the tragic tale of talking to an adoring fan at an airport, only to have her friend steal his sandwich and run away. We'd like to imagine Freddie Prinze Jr.'s hot vampire-slaying wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar, delivering a swift batch of roundhouse kicks to those little brats and rescuing the sandwich from the forces of evil.

Success

Freddie Prinze Jr.'s first major role in The House of Yes might have fooled some people into thinking that his career would follow the same edgy path as his co-star Parker Posey's. In fact, he went the direction of his other co-star, Tori Spelling, and became a tween-hero in a string of romantic comedies (Head Over Heels, Down to You, Summer Catch) and modeled after his big hit, She's All That. No one will ever accuse him of being a good actor, but it's fair to say that he never did less than what was expected of him, especially since he was playing variations on the same character… the character that is and forever will be Freddie Prinze Jr.

With no hits since the first Scooby Doo movie, cynics would say that Freddie Prinze Jr. is too weak to even win a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, let alone make a serious comeback -- but don't count him out just yet. It seems that he's been taking some recent career cues from the legendary John Stamos. If Uncle Jesse can make a comeback on ER, who's to say that Freddie Prinze Jr. can't do the same with his new gig on a little show called 24?

Freddie Prinze Jr. Biography

Show business families can live and breathe tragedies in the worst of times, and just 10 short months after Freddie Prinze Jr., was born, his famous comedian father took his own life. This kind of tragedy could have turned Freddie Prinze Jr. into a poster child for dysfunctional offspring of celebrity parents, but under the guidance of his mother and grandparents, he managed to become a movie star and teen idol instead.

Freddie Prinze Jr.'s first break was on television alongside 1990s TV fixture Steve Urkel as part of a 1994 guest spot on Family Matters. Two years later, he began his on-screen streak of hooking up with Hollywood's pretty young things by knocking up Jessica Alba on an ABC after school special and kissing Claire Danes in To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday. 1997's The House of Yes still stands as the most critically-acclaimed film of Freddie Prinze Jr.'s career. In it, he played the unstable brother of a Jackie Onassis-obsessed woman, played by indie queen du jour Parker Posey. Horror was next as he dodged a hooked psycho and shared the screen with Jennifer Love Hewitt's ample bosom in the surprise hit I Know What You Did Last Summer and its 1998 sequel.

freddie prinze jr. stars in she's all that

Because of his fresh-faced looks, ensemble hits and teen-oriented films, Hollywood producers thought they had the next teen idol on their hands and initially, they were right. In 1999, Freddie Prinze Jr. top-lined She's All That, another surprise hit about a popular high schooler who bets that he can make a mousy classmate into a prom queen. The film made Fatboy Slim's "The Rockafeller Skank" a high school dance favorite while giving hope to plain girls everywhere that they could be prom queens, despite the fact that the film's "mousy classmate" was the beautiful Rachael Leigh Cook wearing nerdy glasses.

The success of She's All That did little to change Hollywood's belief that Freddie Prinze Jr. was actually worth your hard-earned movie dollars and but his next five films certainly did. Wing Commander, Down to You, Boys and Girls, Head Over Heels, and Summer Catch all failed to live up to the mildest of box office expectations, despite the presence of hotties like Claire Forlani, Jessica Biel, Monica Potter, and even Freddie Prinze Jr.'s cinematic partner in crime, Matthew Lillard. At the age of 25, Freddie Prinze Jr. was already on the cusp of being labeled a has-been.

freddie prinze jr. stars in scooby doo and joins the cast of 24

In 2002, Freddie Prinze Jr. teamed up with his off-screen companion Sarah Michelle Gellar and Matthew Lillard (again!) for the live-action version of the popular cartoon, Scooby Doo. Though it's debatable whether he was out-acted by a CGI dog (maybe that was the point), the film's success gave Freddie Prinze Jr. a much needed career punch and spawned a 2004 sequel, Scooby Doo: Monsters Unleashed. It also won him a recurring role on Boston Legal and his own fact-based TV series, Freddie, but the latter only lasted one season and didn't offer much, besides a weekly update on the whereabouts of Brian Austin Green.

With his cool act wearing thin and his female fan base getting stolen by wannabes like Zac Efron, Freddie Prinze Jr. significantly dialed down his output between 2006 and 2008, appearing only in occasional voice roles or low-rent films. He became more visible watching the actors of the WWE, leading him to become a celebrity blogger and creative contributor to Smackdown. In 2009, Freddie Prinze Jr. resumed acting in a proposed U.S. revamp of the hit British series No Heroics, but the show was not picked up by American networks. Call it good timing or great luck, but the cancellation of No Heroics allowed Freddie Prinze Jr. sign on to play counter-terrorist agent Davis Cole in the much-anticipated eighth season of 24, opposite Kiefer Sutherland. Somewhere John Stamos is smiling.